USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications
Environmentally Cued Hatching in Reptiles
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2011
ISSN
1540-7063
Abstract
Evidence is accumulating for the widespread occurrence of environmentally cued hatching (ECH) in animals, but its diversity and distribution across taxa are unknown. Herein I review three types of ECH in reptiles: early hatching, delayed hatching, and synchronous hatching. ECH is currently known from 43 species, including turtles, crocodilians, lizards, snakes, tuatara, and possibly worm lizards. Early hatching caused by physical disturbance (e. g., vibrations) is the most commonly reported ECH across all groups; although it apparently serves an antipredator function in some species, its adaptive value is unknown in most. Delayed hatching, characterized by metabolic depression or embryonic aestivation, and sometimes followed by a hypoxic cue (flooding), occurs in some turtles and possibly in monitor lizards and crocodilians; in some of these species delayed hatching serves to defer hatching from the dry season until the more favorable conditions of the wet season. Synchronous hatching, whereby sibling eggs hatch synchronously despite vertical thermal gradients in the nest, occurs in some turtles and crocodilians. Although vibrations and vocalizations in hatching-competent embryos can stimulate synchronous hatching, cues promoting developmentally less advanced embryos to catch up with more advanced embryos have not been confirmed. Synchronous hatching may serve to dilute predation risk by promoting synchronous emergence or reduce the period in which smells associated with hatching can attract predators to unhatched eggs. Within species, advancing our understanding of ECH requires three types of studies: (1) experiments identifying hatching cues and the plastic hatching period, (2) experiments disentangling hypotheses about multiple hatching cues, and (3) investigations into the environmental context in which ECH might evolve in different species (major predators or abiotic influences on the egg, embryo, and hatchling). Among species and groups, surveys for ECH are required to understand its evolutionary history in reptiles. The probability of ECH occurring is likely influenced by a species's life history, ecology, behavior, and interrelationships with other species (e. g., sizes of predator and prey). More broadly, the discovery of embryo-embryo communication as a mechanism for synchronous hatching in crocodilians and turtles indicates that the social behavior of (nonavian) reptiles has been underestimated.
Language
en_US
Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
Recommended Citation
J. S. Doody; Environmentally Cued Hatching in Reptiles, Integrative and Comparative Biology, Volume 51, Issue 1, 1 July 2011, Pages 49–61, https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icr043
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
Citation only. Full-text article is available through licensed access provided by the publisher. Members of the USF System may access the full-text of the article through the authenticated link provided.